Beijing expressed firm opposition on Thursday to Britain's groundless suspicion and smearing against Chinese high-tech companies, urging the country to stop politicizing and overstretching the concept of national security.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian made the response after the United Kingdom government officials raised concerns that Chinese-manufactured drones are being used to take high-resolution images of critical national infrastructure sites in the UK.

The Chinese government has never asked and will never ask any company to collect or store data against the laws, Lin stressed.

He urged relevant UK departments to stop pursuing and oppressing China's high-tech companies and do more to promote the sound and stable development of China-UK relations.